Contributing to Apache Polaris

Thank you for considering contributing to Apache Polaris. Any contribution (code, test cases, documentation, use cases, …) is valuable!

This documentation will help you get started.

Contribute bug reports and feature requests

You can report an issue in the Polaris Catalog issue tracker.

How to report a bug

Note: If you find a security vulnerability, do NOT open an issue. Please email security@apache.org instead.

When filing an issue, make sure to answer these five questions:

1. What version of Apache Polaris are you using?
2. What operating system and processor architecture are you using?
3. What did you do?
4. What did you expect to see?
5. What did you see instead?

Troubleshooting questions should be posted on:

• Slack
• dev mailing list (you can subscribe) instead of the issue tracker.

Maintainers and community members will answer your questions there or ask you to file an issue if you’ve encountered a bug.

How to suggest a feature or enhancement

Apache Polaris aims to provide the Apache Iceberg community with new levels of choice, flexibility and control over their data, with full enterprise security and Apache Iceberg interoperability with Amazon Web Services (AWS), Confluent, Dremio, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Salesforce and more.

If you’re looking for a feature that doesn’t exist in Apache Polaris, you’re probably not alone. Others likely have similar needs. Please open a GitHub Issue describing the feature you’d like to see, why you need it, and how it should work.

When creating your feature request, document your requirements first. Please, try to not directly describe the solution.

Before you begin contributing code

Review open issues and discuss your approach

If you want to dive into development yourself then you can check out existing open issues or requests for features that need to be implemented. Take ownership of an issue and try fix it.

Before starting on a large code change, please describe the concept/design of what you plan to do on the issue/feature request you intend to address. If unsure if the design is good or will be accepted, discuss it with the community in the respective issue first, before you do too much active development.

Provide your changes in a Pull Request

The best way to provide changes is to fork Apache Polaris repository on GitHub and provide a Pull Request with your changes. To make it easy to apply your changes please use the following conventions:

Before opening a pull request

• Pull Requests should be based on the main branch.
• Create a branch that will house your change:

  git clone https://github.com/apache/polaris
  cd polaris
  git checkout main
  git pull
  git checkout -b my-branch
  

• Work on the changes of your pull requests locally.
• Recommended checks:

  # Ensure the code is properly formatted and compiles:
  ./gradlew format compileAll
  # Ensure the code is passing the checks (including formatting checks & tests):
  ./gradlew check
  

• You may want to push your changes to your personal Polaris fork. Git will emit a URL that you can use to create the Pull Request. Do not create the Pull Request yet.

  git push --set-upstream your-github-accout
  

Opening a Pull Request

• The Pull Request summary should provide a concise summary of the change, get inspired by Conventional Commits.
• The Pull Request description should provide the background (rationale) of the change and describe the changes in way that someone who has no prior knowledge can understand the rationale of the change and the change itself.
• If there is a matching GitHub Issue, add a separate line at the end of the commit message of the issue that the PR fixes. Do not add the issue number into the subject.

  Fixes #123456
  

  If the PR does not fully fix the issue, use Related to #123456 instead of Fixes #123456.

Tips:

• If the branch for your Pull Request contains only one (squashed) commit, GitHub will populate the PR summary and description from that single commit.
• When opening a PR consider whether the PR is “draft” or already “ready for review”. “Draft” means work in progress, things will change, but comments are welcome. “Ready for review” means that the PR is requested to be merged as is (pending review feedback).

Working on a Pull Request

• Don’t forget to periodically rebase your branch:

  git pull --rebase
  git push your-github-accout my-branch --force
  

• Test that your changes work by adapting or adding tests. Verify the build passes (see README.md for build instructions).
• If your Pull Request has conflicts with the main branch, please rebase and fix the conflicts.
• If your PR requires more work or time or bigger changes, please put the PR to “draft” state to indicate that it is not meant to be “thoroughly” reviewed at this point.

Merging a Pull Request

• When a PR is about to be merged, cross-check the commit summary and message for the merged Git commit.
• Keep in mind that the Git commit subject and message is going to be read by other people, potentially even after years. The Git commit subject and message will appear “as is” in release notes.
• Make sure the subject and message are properly formatted and contains a concise description of the changes in way that someone who has no prior knowledge can understand the rationale of the change and the change itself. Remove information that’s of no use for someone reading the Git commit log, for example single intermediate commit messages like formatting or fix test.

Java version requirements

The Apache Polaris build currently requires Java 21 or later. There are a few tools that help you running the right Java version:

• SDKMAN! follow the installation instructions, then run sdk list java to see the available distributions and versions, then run sdk install java <identifer from list> using the identifier for the distribution and version (>= 21) of your choice.
• jenv If on a Mac you can use jenv to set the appropriate SDK.

Good Practices

• Change of public interface (or more generally speaking Polaris extension point) should be discussed and approved on the dev mailing list. The discussion on the dev mailing list should happen before having a “ready-for-review” Pull Request.
• git log can help you find the original/relevant authors of the code you are modifying. If you need, feel free to tag the author in your Pull Request comment if you need assistance or review.
• Do not re-create a pull-request for the same change. Use one Pull Request related to the same change(s). The purpose here is to keep the history and all comments in the Pull Request.
• Consider open questions and concerns in all comments of your Pull Request, provide replies and resolve addressed comments, if those don’t serve reference purposes. If a comment doesn’t contain nit, minor, or not a blocker mention, please provide feedback to the comment before merging.
• Give time for review. For instance two working days is a good base to get first reviews and comments.
• If you have the feeling that the discussions in a Pull Request are not going to a consensus, feel free to bring the discussion on the dev mailing list.